Nostalgia Trap

Do you need a college degree in order to understand T.S. Eliot poems? Does subjecting a work of art or literature to academic analysis ruin our enjoyment of said work? This week Ryan and I talk about the “point” of a humanities education in a technocratic neoliberal world, and reflect on the increasingly dominant view of college as a transaction rather than an education. How do we put the heart back in higher ed? Listen to the whole episode 

Shane Burley is a writer and filmmaker whose work explores the contours of 21st century fascist movements. His latest book, Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse (AK Press, 2021), covers the rapid shift in organizing tactics on the right and left in the years since the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. In this conversation we reflect on the fascist, antisemitic vibes now permeating pop culture and political discourse, and Shane shares his experiences as a journalist covering radical politics at an increasingly fractured historical moment.  Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access bonus episodes, livestreams, and more 

This week Justin and I talk about the UFO documentary Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind: Contact Has Begun (2020), and get into the multiple UFO narratives currently circulating in online/media/state intelligence discourse. As always, we apply the Trap method of entertaining many different layered truths (an ecology of realities is one way to put it), but also tell some stories about our own "contact" experiences that shaped our personal perceptions of what's out there. Listen to whole episode 

This week Yasmin and I endure Andrew Dominik’s much over-hyped Netflix #content Blonde, a fictional passion play “about” Marilyn Monroe, based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates. Our reactions are analytical and emotional, and we work out the intense feelings about celebrity, power, and gender brought up by the film’s often absurd provocations. And by the way, what are the gender dynamics at work here? Is this Andrea Dworkin sex-negative feminism disguised as arthouse shock therapy, or a brilliant, radical take on fame and desire? One thing we can agree on: Marilyn deserves better.  Listen to the whole episode 

Is the era of tech utopianism over? Does anyone believe that Zuckerberg's Hail Mary plan to trap us all in some nightmarish alternate digital reality is actually going to work? This week Justin and I consider the social and cultural elements of tech as a driver of the US economy, and wonder if virtual reality is really the future, or the dead end of Silicon Valley's grip on the popular imagination. Listen to the whole episode

Historian and author Jason Vuic returns to the Trap to talk about his book The Yucks: Two Years in Tampa with the Losingest Team in NFL History, which tells the incredible story of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ disastrous, legendary first season as a professional football organization. Marked by appalling working conditions, a colorfully brutal head coach, a penny-pinching owner, and a winking gay pirate mascot, the Bucs’ 26-game losing streak is a bizarre piece of sports history that, as Vuic explains, paints a striking picture of 1970s American entrepreneurial culture and the chaotic politics of building and promoting Florida.  Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap and access bonus episodes, our weekly livestream, and more 

As we continue into the "wormhole" opened up by COVID and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Justin and I consider the positions of those "behind the wall" of empire. How will we experience the future shocks now coming more clearly into view?  Subscribe to listen to all our livestreams whenever you want

How much American bootstrap ideology are we obligated to deliver to students? This week Ryan Boyd and I take a look at some “practical advice” about “surviving college” from a couple of recent popular books on the subject, and we discover a disturbing strain of self-help/New Age/Protestant work ethic/grindset philosophy that, perhaps unsurprisingly, fails to acknowledge structural and material barriers (money, food, housing, etc) to student success. So what’s a teacher to do? Sell the hustle or sell the trapdoor? Subscribe to hear the whole episode 

This week on the livestream we continue our discussion with Justin Rogers-Cooper on the end of the neoliberal order in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the "wormhole" we're entering. Justin offers some context and insights from environmental historian Jason W. Moore's Capitalism in the Web of Life (Verso, 2015), and we listen to some groovy stuff from JPW's excellent new album Something Happening/Always Happening. Subscribe to hear the whole episode and access all our bonus episodes, livestreams, videos, and more

Aaron and Carlee from the 90s movie podcast Hit Factory join us for a conversation about Oliver Stone’s 1994 maximalist murder-fest Natural Born Killers. Is this a masterpiece of postmodern satire, or a mindlessly self-indulgent pastiche? As we discover together, this movie is trickier than its cartoonish surface, painting  a disturbing vision of American violence and celebrity that, nearly thirty years later, still burns like acid.   Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon for bonus episodes, livestreams, videos, and much more